In Real Life, poison is usually detected and identified thanks to its bitter taste and/or smell. But how can we identify a poison as such in works like anime or video games, where taste and smell aren't an option?

Eastern media tend to portray poisonous substances in a dark purple color, usually bubbling. In Western media, Sickly Green is more common because of the former popularity of Arsenates, which really are fluorescent green. There are also other works from both sides of the Atlantic showing poisons and venoms of various other colors.

Examples:

Purple Poison

Bleach features Mayuri's Ashisogi Jizo, which releases a purple poison cloud. The affected victims also turns purple. Gin Ichimaru's true power release a deadly poison with a purple aura.

Cobra from Oracion Seis in Fairy Tail owns a violet giant snake named Cuberios which is poisonous and his/her victims turn slowly purple when bitten (seen in the anime with Erza). Also his Poison Dragon Slayer's scales are violet.

In InuYasha, Naraku's Shouki is dark purple, and is most certainly poisonous.

Naruto features purple-colored poisons, seen with Shizune's Breath Weapon and Sasori's weapons.

Ronin Warriors has Sekhmet, Warlord of Venom, whose corrosive poison is usually portrayed as pink or purple. Interestingly enough, his armor is mostly green.

Literature

In A Song of Ice and Fire, when Joffrey is poisoned at his wedding feast, it's strongly implied that this was the work of the Tyrells, specifically Cool Old Lady Olenna, who would have taken a poisonous stone disguised as an amethyst out of Sansa's jeweled hair net and dropped it in his cup of wine. One indication of this is that when Tyrion gets Joffrey's wine poured over his head, it's described as a "red torrent," but when he picks up the chalice after it's been refilled and drunk from, the remaining wine is purple.

In Pokémon, the Poison elemental type has a purple icon, "Poisoned" status is also purple, and many Poison-type attacks (such as Toxic and Gunk Shot) are represented with a bubbly purple goop. Furthermore, many Poison-related Pokemon like Koffing/Weezing, Ekans/Arbok, Gastly/Haunter/Gengar, Nidoran/Nidorina/Nidorino/Nidoqueen/Nidoking, Zubat/Golbat/Crobat, Stunky/Skuntank, Skorupi/Drapion are violet in color.

In Mario games, the purple shroom inflicts poison or disables the playable characters, depending on the game.

In the Pikmin games, the spores from the Puffstool and the poison gas in the sequel are purple. The color coding is also used for (the more pinkish) Munge Dweevils, which are part of a family of enemies with Elemental Powers as well as the Titan Dweevil, when he's about to use his poison weapon. Oddly, White Pikmin are the type immune to the latter, while Purple Pikmin don't have a hazardous element they're immune tothough they can't be blown by wind, making Whites the only Pikmin who's color does not match that of their element.

In Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, the poison status effect causes Nathan to take on a purple tint. Poisonous snakes, Poison Armors and other poison enemies are purple, fitting the games focus on different elemental traits. The Manticore card applies the Poison element to your spells, which results in predominantly purple graphical effects. Interestingly enough, antidotes are also represented by a bottle filled with purple liquid.

When Kefka dumps poison into the river surrounding Doma Castle in Final Fantasy VI, the water takes on a purplish hue.

A promotional picture for the first season of The Borgias depicts Lucrezia Borgia holding a small vial filled with green liquid, presumably poison, as the real-life Lucrezia Borgia was supposedly a notorious poisoner. In the series itself, poison is usually depicted as colorless, though.

In Minecraft, being poisoned turns your health bar a sickly green, and contracting food poisoning makes your hunger bar green. During both kinds of poisoning you also have green swirls appear around you.

In Warcraft III the plague cloud released by some Scourge units is green and intoxicates anyone nearby. The Venom Globe is bright green and Dryads can use green poisonous spears.

Feyrbrand the Green-Tusked Dragon from The Legend of Dragoon is green and can spit a poisonous green goo from its belly. Furthermore, toxic stuff tends to be green-colored.

Throughout the Ultima series, the various color-coded potions do a variety of things, but the green potion is always poison, and a poisoned character's health bar turns green. Furthermore, some of the games had green swamps that would poison your character if you walked through them without special swamp boots (also green).

In Castle Crashers the poison is green, and the Green Knight can use poisonous attacks.

In Stinkoman 20X6, the poison dripping from "Tortan" (a bottle of poison) is bright lime-green in color.

In one of the X-Men Legends games, if you level up Cyclops enough, he gets an upgrade that makes his beams radioactive, doing slow continual damage for some time after it lands. Naturally, this means the beam turns green.

This is a BRICKO brick shot through with deadly poison which has tainted it green. Because everybody knows that all poison is green. If you're ever wondering if something is poisoned, your first question should be "Is it green?" If it's not green, eat it, because you're totally safe. In fact, the whole reason Kings had food tasters in ancient days is because they were all colorblind.

Webcomics

In The Order of the Stick, the poison used by Daimyo Kubota to kill Therkla is green and features green bubbles from the victim. Later, the Strength-draining poison used on Vaarsuvius features green bubbles as well.

Other

A campaign called "Mr.Yuck",(or "Officer Ugg") intended to teach young children about staying away from poisonous substances,had green stickers with a Mr.Yuck face for parents to put on containers.

Other Colors

Anime and Manga

In Fairy Tail, Cobra's actual Dragon Slayer venom is dark red in color and more steaming than bubbling. Cuberios' poison too is showed to have this color, and yet his/hers victims become purple instead as seen above.

One Piece has the dreaded MH5 poison gas, which releases a white cloud of deadly poison. However, it is usually changed to the usual purple mist in the video games featuring Don Krieg as a playable character. Furthermore, Magellan's Venom Demon: Hell's Judgement is crimson-colored and releases foul smokes, giving the impression of being hot somehow.

The Elder Scrolls Series utilizes color-coded poisons, each corresponding to the color that represents a vitality bar: red for health poison, blue for magicka poison, and green for stamina poison. It helps in skyrim that the bottles for poison are oddly shaped, while the restoratives are 'potion-shaped'.

Western Animation

The many types of gases used by the vile borg, Noxious in Skysurfer Strike Force also come in many bright colors.

In nature, bright colors are often a color code for things that are venomous (see many species of amphibians with venom). Bright blue in particular is an appetite suppressor, as no foods humans consume are naturally that shade (blueberries are coloured indigo) — and things that are blue are usually venomous. Dietitians will advise people wishing to lose weight to eat on blue plates, for example. Purple, being close to blue in the spectrum, shares some of blue's appetite-averting effects.

Many venomous reptiles, unlike the frogs, also subvert this. Some are brightly colored, such as the coral snake (red and yellow, kills a fellow) and the eyelash viper (just yellow, also kills a fellow) but there are many snakes that are brightly colored and not venomous (like those that mimic coral snakes) or dull-colored and venomous, like the brownish King Cobra and the dead-leaf-colored Gaboon viper.

Chlorine gas is a particularly noxious respiratory irritant that just so happens to be yellowish green in color.

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